Monograph
documenting an eponymous project in which the American artist explores
the relationship between humans and nature by means of a sculptural
assemblage made out of the skulls of Europe's largest animal species.
Artist, performer, poet, essayist, and activist
Jimmie Durham is one of the most
influential voices of the contemporary art world. He explores the
complex encounters between the human being, technology, and nature
from different cultural perspectives. His oeuvre spans sculpture,
drawing, collage, printmaking, painting, photography, video,
performance, and poetry, demonstrating a remarkable attention to form
and a specificity of material choices. Durham became internationally
famous in the 1980s for his sculptures made from materials such as
wood, stone, and the bones and skulls of animals, with which he
frequently embodies the incorporation of Native American elements into
contemporary art, thus breaking down standardized visual languages and
discourses. This publication accompanies his exhibition
“God's Children, God's Poems” at the Migros Museum
für Gegenwartskunst, which, as the artist explains,
“gathers the skulls of the largest animals of Europe and brings
them back into our world.” Featuring an introduction by Jimmie
Durham, and with contributions by the curator and art historian of the
Cree Indians Heritage Richard William W. Hill, and the Migros Museum
Director Heike Munder, the book reflects Durham's examination of our
relationship to animals. He states: “It does not matter if
another type of animal is not like us in the areas of speech,
reasoning, or such criteria, and everyone who has had a pet or friend
animal of another species knows this. It is not anthropomorphic. It is
anthropocentric to imagine that we are the standard, that we are
angelic, unearthly, or 'higher' beings.” Taking his
reflection on mankind's anthropocentric viewpoint as a starting
point, this volume contextualizes the exhibition within the larger
body of Durham's artistic practice, which is a continuous
examination of issues such as the representation of civilizing values,
historicity, and social identity.
Published on the occasion of
the eponymous exhibition at Migros
Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, from August 26 to
November 5, 2017.
Jimmie Durham (1940-2021) is one of the most influential artists, not least for younger generations of artists and curators. Of his art he said that it “works against the two foundations of the European tradition: Belief and Architecture.” Sculpture, seen as the coming together of object, image, and word, was fundamental to his practice, but he was also a poet, essayist, and educator.
Durham's life as an artist began in the mid-1960s in Texas. In the early 1970s he worked in Geneva. In the late 1970s he was a political organizer with the American Indian Movement, Director of the International Indian Treaty Council and its representative to the United Nations. In New York around 1980 he turned once again to art. Between 1987 and 1994 he was based in Mexico, and thereafter in Europe, or, as he prefered to say, in Eurasia.
